IT was a cruise devoid of glitz and glamour. The ship had no spiral staircases, vast atriums or gilded accouterments, and if there were any slinky white satin gowns around, they were being slept in. The weather was chilly and the destinations...

ON the first day, God created Cape Breton. On the second day, He threw rocks at it. So they say in Nova Scotia, anyway, and from the Cabot Trail, the two-lane road that loops around and through Cape Breton Highlands National Park, it takes only a...

THIRTY years ago the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation televised a documentary, ''The Vanishing Cape Breton Fiddler,'' that struck a jarring note on that island off the Nova Scotia mainland. It warned that Cape Breton's beloved music tradition was in...

IT was an angel of death in Halifax's Old Burying Ground that made clear to me why this grand port city of the Atlantic seems at once so familiar and yet so foreign. The angel's outstretched wings and grim countenance were carved over several...

-------------------------------------------------------------------- RALPH BLUMENTHAL is a reporter for The New York Times. By RALPH BLUMENTHAL ''Halte!'' From a drawbridge guarding access to the walled fortress of Louisbourg, France's largest...